Malta at the first global warming what Ghar Dalam has to teach us

Before there was anyone that could have told this story, Malta was attached to the mainland and shared an ecosystem with continental Europe. Elephants, hippos, deer and a wide variety of other animals roamed freely during that ice age. Some were even fashionable in fur coats – hairy elephants (it’s kind of like thinking about feathered dinosaurs). Then the Earth started to warm in one of those cycles that non-scientists like to point to when talking about global warming in our age. Of course, this was before man, so the temperatures did not spike nearly as much as they have in the last decade and are predicted to do in the next 30 years or so. Water levels rose cutting off Malta and the animals on the island from the mainland and dividing it into three distinct parts. Soon all but the highest parts of Malta were underwater, and the animals had to adapt to fewer resources, smaller land area and a threat they had never before encountered. Every mammal on the island began to shrink until dwarf hippos and elephants no larger than medium-sized dogs were commonplace. These smaller versions consumed fewer calories and required fewer resources to live. They were also close to the ground, which served as some protection against death from above. Land animals were not the only ones to adapt. While resources on the island got scarcer, resources in the sea became more abundant. Sharks grew to enormous sizes and could leap from the sea onto the land to drag prey back into the sea. Soon these sharks were so powerful and the islands so small that the sharks could leap over the island grabbing an in-flight snack as it went through the air. Each leap resulted in the death of the largest animals at first. The smaller ones went unnoticed for a time, but even they were not safe. Time and again, sharks would jump the islands and grab a snack as they flew over. One day, the last mammal of any reasonable size was eaten, and Malta was left with hedgehogs and lizards and no trace that any other animals had existed on the island until teeth were discovered in Ghar Dalam. While temperatures during that time were nowhere near what they will be at the end of this human-driven global warming, they were still significant enough to initiate a large change on Malta’s prehistory and the animals that were a part of it. If Malta does not learn its lesson from those animals and the prehistoric temple builders, its people may find that they will meet the same fate.